It would appear B.C. is bucking the trend when it comes to retaining nurses in the country.<\/p>\n
A new report from the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI) says that for every 100 registered nurses, under the age of 35, starting in the field this year, a national average of 40 of them left the job.<\/p>\n
Renaud Brossard, vice-president of communications atMEI, tells 1130 NewsRadio that\u2019s up from the national average of 36 out of 100 in 2014.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut as our population ages, as we see a greater demand on health care, this sort of increase in ratio of inflow and outflow means we\u2019re going to have less nurses, less medical professionals available,\u201d said Brossard.<\/p>\n
But in B.C., Brossard says an average of only 27 nurses left \u2014 the best rate in Canada.<\/p>\n
\u201cB.C. shows it can be done,\u201d said Brossard.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd even though that\u2019s the best stats in the country, it should not be satisfactory. We should get those numbers as close to zero as possible. If we look at the inflow\/outflow ratio back in 2014, B.C. was the worst in the country. There were 54 young nurses for every 100 starting in the profession that were leaving the field. But over the last decade, B.C. turned that around and is now the best-performing province in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brossard credits retention in B.C. to schedule flexibility \u2014 something not offered across some parts of the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we\u2019re talking about involuntary overtime, one of the things that was done was to introduce shift-sharing pools. Instead of having the hospital managers decide which nurse is going to do overtime, what they did is to ask specific pools of nurses, \u2018We have a need for people to fill this slot in overtime, and amongst yourselves figure out who can do that.\u2019 That allowed people to lend a hand to one another. It\u2019s really small things like that, but that has given nurses this ability to work better as part of a system that\u2019s very heavily constrained.\u201d<\/p>\n
He adds that the B.C. government has also begun to speed up the accreditation process for foreign-trained nurses.<\/p>\n
\u201cB.C. worked on two fronts. One of them is the outflow reduced, so the number of nurses leaving has been dropping, while at the same time, the number of newly trained nurses that are registering in B.C. for the first time has been increasing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the good news for B.C., Brossard admits it\u2019s alarming that so many nurses are leaving the field.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt contributes directly to the health-care crisis,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n
BC Nurses\u2019 Union (BCNU) President Adriane Gear tells 1130 NewsRadio the report is nice to hear.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have only started to implement phase 1 of [mandated nurse-to-patient] ratios; however, nurses talk. So, nurses who are considering any province in Canada where they\u2019d like to work, maybe that\u2019s influencing things, and people are coming here.\u201d<\/p>\n
But she says readers shouldn\u2019t mistake the statistic for what\u2019s really happening on the frontlines.<\/p>\n
\u201cBased on polling of our members in 2024, 22 per cent were still reporting seriously considering making a plan to leave. That\u2019s still quite significant. What we do deal with here is, despite an agreement from government to implement [mandated] ratios, nurses and patients continue to work in and receive care in very poor conditions, where nurses are responsible for maybe it\u2019s supposed to be four patients \u2014 but they\u2019re actually responsible for eight or 12. So, untenable workloads.\u201d<\/p>\n
She says that results in patient care suffering, which can lead to nurse burnout.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe level of aggression and violence that my members experience, they believe, has gone up exponentially. WorkSafe BC statistics validates that perspective where we see a 53 per cent increase in workplace injuries that require time loss due to violence. So, working conditions remain poor.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe level of aggression and violence that my members experience, they believe, has gone up exponentially.\u201d<\/p>\n
She adds there are more than 4,500 job openings in nursing in B.C. that need to be filled.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are positions that have been posted internally within health authorities. They\u2019ve been posted externally. They do not include temporary leaves\u2026 those are vacancies they simply can\u2019t fill. So, 4,500 is a lot and I don\u2019t believe it includes the number of nurses that we will need to recruit in order to implement minimum nurse-to-patient ratios in all acute care settings, let alone community and long-term care.\u201d<\/p>\n
New contract talks<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the BCNU has begun negotiations for a new collective agreement with the province. Talks began on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The union is calling for changes that include improved working conditions and steps to show nurses their work is valued.<\/p>\n
The most recent deal between the province and the union was in effect from April 1, 2022, until March 31, 2025.<\/p>\n
\u2014With files from Raynaldo Suarez<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It would appear B.C. is bucking the trend when it comes to retaining nurses in the country. A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-232613","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}